Engineer in Building and Public Works techniques, Tibus Kouadio is the Managing Director of a construction service company. With a staff of 25 employees, he designs architectural plans, carries out technical feasibility studies and supervises construction sites.

Indeed, business was going well enough for him. One of the projects he carried out provided him with nearly 20 million in profits. Suddenly, everything stopped. Markets have become increasingly rare. A set of difficulties that led him to the crisis forcing him to lay off to keep only 5 positions. Unable to bear the maintenance costs, Tibus is also forced to resell the 4 public transport vehicles he owned.

As part of market development activities, the USAID-funded Sanitation Service Delivery Project (SSD) is working with city councils to establish a supply chain. The objective of the project is to train and engage the private sector to provide sanitation services to low-income households through commercial provision. "Sani Plus" is a brand of quality and low-cost sanitation products created by the project.

Going to Abobo City Hall for an administrative formality, Tibus discovers on a bulletin board, the call for proposals of the SSD project to recruit VSEs interested in sanitation marketing. "I thought to myself why not try," he said.

A few months after his training on the construction of Sani Plus sanitation products, Tibus said he was impressed by the level of quality with which the works are carried out. For him, the process used to make a lost well with concrete nozzles is quite innovative.

A rigorous worker, respecting the quality standards of the Sani Plus brand, Tibus has begun to make a name for itself in the sanitation marketing sector. He was doing more and more works. Although the revenues generated by the sale of Sani Plus products were quite lower than the costs of building large real estate projects, Tibus did not give up. "I would rather earn a little bit every day than win big once and have nothing left after that," he continues.

This''Sani Plus'' contractor currently has at least 115 sanitation facilities (toilets, septic tanks and cesspools) built in the municipality of Abobo. This generated a turnover of more than USD 19,000. In addition, Tibus has created a second company exclusively dedicated to the Sani Plus sanitation products business. This company employs 7 full-time young graduates whose salaries are financed through the sale of sanitation products. According to him, the money generated by the sale of Sani Plus sanitation products is very useful to him. "Often I take Sani Plus' money to do bidding on public contracts, and that helps me a lot," concluded Tibus Kouadio.